Concession dispute: Reactions to the court decision

Stefan Bühler is confident that the Südostschweiz Group's media monopoly in Graubünden will be broken. The Uvek must now examine the question of abuse of the media group's dominant market position when reassessing the award of the license. When the license was awarded in October 2008 to Radio Grischa, which belongs to the Südostschweiz Group, the aspect of diversity of opinion and offerings in the broadcasting area was completely ignored. According to Bühler, the media group's concentration of power in Graubünden is absolutely obvious. The group owns all daily newspapers and all paid weekly newspapers, local television and local radio.
Roger Schawinski sees the ruling as a setback for the Federal Office of Communications (Bakom). He sees his most important argument - diversity of opinion - confirmed by the Federal Administrative Court. Both in Graubünden and in Aargau, these are publishers with clearly dominant market positions, as Schawinski told the SDA news agency on Monday. According to Schawinski, the projects launched together with local partners in Aargau and the Südostschweiz region will be pursued further.

AZ Media relaxed
The ruling has been noted, said Eva Keller, media spokeswoman for AZ Medien, which includes the Aargauer Zeitung, the local television station Tele
M1 and Radio Argovia, on request. AZ Medien will only comment on the ruling as soon as the written reasons for the ruling are available. Keller emphasized that the company is calmly awaiting the reassessment by Bakom.

Günter Heuberger: "Very important decision for media diversity"
Günter Heuberger, Managing Director of Radio Top and Tele Top, considers the revocation of the licensing decisions based on the ruling of the Federal Administrative Court to be a "very important decision for media diversity in Eastern Switzerland". This is because the department of Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger must now check whether the media monopoly of Tagblatt Medien in Eastern Switzerland is not being abused. If this were found to be the case, he believes that Tele Säntis, which belongs to the Top Group, would have to be granted a local television license. Tele Säntis was defeated by Tele Ostschweiz. Like the St. Galler Tagblatt, Radio FM1 and the weekly newspaper Anzeiger, Tele Ostschweiz belongs to Tagblatt Medien AG.

Tele Ostschweiz expects the proceedings to be handled swiftly
Tele Ostschweiz is awaiting a statement of reasons from the responsible body, the broadcaster announced on Monday. The broadcaster also expects an appropriate interim solution until the definitive conclusion of the proceedings. In particular, it is reliant on the payment of the previously blocked fee shares. Due to the protracted proceedings and the tense economic situation, Tele Ostschweiz would otherwise have to introduce drastic cost-cutting measures in terms of personnel and programming.